


Body Count

by sugarspuncoeurls



Category: Berserk
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:44:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8125648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarspuncoeurls/pseuds/sugarspuncoeurls
Summary: 9...10...11...12...
Twelve scars, he’s counted so far. He’s missed some, he knows. Dawn’s gray, such as it is, muddies detail. He makes a note of each he finds, so that he can look for the others come daylight.Tch. As if he really wants the day to come. The gray does more than hide; it softens.And he’s never seen her softer.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: New username, new fandom, new OTP that I'm determined to make happy, starting here. Let's do this.
> 
> This fic can also be found through my tumblr, same username.

_9…10…11…12…_

Twelve scars, he’s counted so far. He’s missed some, he knows. Dawn’s gray, such as it is, muddies detail. He makes a note of each he finds, so that he can look for the others come daylight.

 _Tch._ As if he really wants the day to come. The gray does more than hide; it softens.

And he’s never seen her softer.

_1…2…3…4…_

“What are you doing?”

He pauses, finger poised over a thigh, crooked to the shape of a patch of knotted tissue. He indulges as he lifts his gaze, trails his eyes over this person he’s come to know so well over the past three years, this body that’s become so familiar over the last few hours. She’ll scold him, maybe, for being so blatant in his study, but he knows her cheeks will still warm, and her mouth will still purse, and her eyes will still lower in some bashful manner that’ll remind him that he’s the first one she’s ever allowed to do this, to see her, wounds and all.

And then he’ll remember that she’s the first one, too. That for all he’s done, he’s never done _this_ , lain by someone’s side, naked and weaponless and open, _vulnerable_. He’ll remember, and feel his own cheeks flush slightly, and wonder if the gray will be enough to hide it.

It won’t be, and it might say something pretty significant that he won’t mind.

When he reaches her face, he finds he’s half right. Her lips are puckered just so, and if he puts his hand to her cheek, he knows he’ll feel a distinct heat. Her eyes, though, are on him, lidded and sleep-lined yet always, ever alert, conscious of his every movement.

He smiles – “Nothin’.” – in answer to her question, and completes his hand’s journey.

She doesn’t react much; a small twitch of her shoulders, a slight hitch in her breath, but she stays as she is, settled within the loose circle of his arms. Her brows lift in a show of skepticism. “It’s never ‘nothing’ with you.” He smirks, a half-cock to his mouth.

“Whatever you say, General.”

She scoffs. “You sound like the others.”

“Don’t like it?”

“No. It sounds wrong.” A sigh escapes her lips and he feels her slump, shoulder pressing harder into the pillow she’s made of his arm. “It _is_ wrong. Griffith is our general, and always will be. It’s not my title to hold, even temporarily, and as soon as we get him back, that’ll be made clear. End of story.”

“So says the _commander_ , then, huh?” He eyes her, reading the defiant silence she offers as confirmation, then lets out an amused huff and looks to the gray sky overhead. “Sounds like a plan.”

“As good as we have.” She brings his gaze back to her with a light hand to his chest, fingertips grazing the thick line of his collar. Her expression is anxious, black eyes wide – and just as pretty as he remembers – as she tries to read his reply before he has the chance to speak it. “You’ll be there, right? I know you said you would be, but…”

“I’ll be there,” he answers, just as his wandering finger finds that scar again, runs over the strange glass-like smoothness of it. She twitches again, and his smirk widens. “Just don’t lose anymore sleep over it. Judeau told on you.”

She breaks eye contact, her gaze slightly sheepish, to follow the path of her own hand on his clavicle, across his chest, toward the bunched muscle of his far shoulder. “I won’t. We can’t afford slip-ups.” She hesitates for half a silent moment. “Thank you.”

He withholds another grunt of humor. “Anytime.”

He finds the scar nearest to the previous, higher on her leg. It’s not quite so smooth, but the exit wounds of serrated arrows never are. He can tell it didn’t receive enough salve; a consequence of the desperately quick escape they made to Midland’s borders in the midst of the army’s ambush.

 _If I had been there_ , he thinks, gently rubbing as if he can smooth the wound away, _would more have survived? Would these scars be here?_

The rough pads of her fingers find his face, soft, and he briefly shifts his attention, brushes his mouth against the calluses of her hand. The sound she makes is small, but there, and it stirs him, makes him aim to forget the possible mistakes of the past and focus on the now. Now, he’s here, primed to make things right, with Griffith, with the Hawks, with –

“You still haven’t answered me,” Casca murmurs. Her head tilts and her fingers rise, feathering the jut of a cheekbone.

This time, he’s honest. “I’m counting.”

Her eyebrows bunch. “Counting what?”

“These.” He taps, once, against a scar, then another, navigating each again in his head. _5_ is over a hip, _6_ is across her waist, _7_ is in the shadows underlining one breast, _8_ is lodged in the terrain of muscle marking her back.

Casca blinks, following the roam of his hand, shivering slightly with each pass, before she replies. “You have them, too.” Her fingers trail across his cheek to his nose, to the groove of displaced skin and bone slashing its bridge. “You know that, right?”

He smiles – “Yeah.” – before abruptly running one firm palm over the curve of her buttocks. A scar there, too, quickly becoming one of his favorites. “I like yours better.”

She sucks in a breath. “You –” she begins, eyes hard on his, that body tensing in his arms, poised to reprimand, to set him straight as she’s always tried to…

Until she doesn’t. The breath leaves her just as quickly as it came, the line of her back relaxes, and with only a soft shove to his shoulder, she sighs. “Idiot,” she says, before pressing her cheek back into his arm, her fingers alighting back on his chest, growing ever familiar.

He angles his hand back to her thigh, humming as he starts the count again. “Letting me off the hook?” It’s a first, but so is this, them.

“For now,” she declares. He feels her shuffle, bring herself flush against his side, hair tickling his chin. When he looks down, her head is tellingly lowered; against his chest, her cheek is warm. “You haven’t changed,” she whispers.

Guts squeezes the flesh under his hand. Above their heads, through the thicket of tree leaves under which they rest, the gray begins to fade. _No, I have_ , he wants to say. _Just like you have. Just like we have._

He settles for, “I know.”

_9…10…11…12…_


End file.
